In this blog post, we’ll explore the background and themes of Osamu Dazai’s masterpiece ‘No Longer Human’, as well as the connection between the author’s life and his work.
“No Longer Human” is the masterpiece of Japanese novelist Osamu Dazai. He began writing it in March 1948 and completed the manuscript on May 12; one month later, on June 13, Osamu Dazai took his own life by jumping into the Tamagawa Josui River alongside Tomoe Yamazaki, with whom he was having an affair. This work is a novella that was serialized in a magazine in 1948 and published by Chikuma Shobo one month after the author’s death, alongside the short story “Goodbye.”
‘No Longer Human’ is a work written in the form of a first-person memoir, depicting the life of Yōzō Oba—a man who puts on a comical act in front of others but is unable to reveal his true self—from his childhood through his youth; it is regarded as a masterpiece that explores the essence of human existence. The name of the protagonist, Yōzō Oba, also appears in Dazai’s early novel ‘The Flower of the Clown’.
Although Dazai wrote “Goodbye” after this work, it remained unfinished, making ‘No Longer Human’ his final completed novel. This novel has often been called a “novel like a suicide note” because the author took his own life in the early hours of June 13, just before the final installment was published. There are also autobiographical interpretations suggesting that parts of the story reflect Dazai’s own life. However, due to the author’s death, the truth remains an eternal mystery, leaving only speculation to run rampant.
There was once a belief that Dazai wrote this novel in one sitting, but this widely held theory was overturned in 1998 when his family discovered the first draft. The discovered draft consisted of approximately 157 pages of 200-character manuscript paper; every single word had been revised multiple times, and the content had been refined repeatedly, leaving traces of the painstaking effort he put into the creative process throughout the text. Donald Keene’s English translation, ‘No Longer Human’, is widely recognized. Overseas, the work is sometimes interpreted as depicting a woman’s sexual abuse of a boy, reflecting a perspective that differs from that in Japan.
As you read this work, references to “God” appear repeatedly. Dazai is known to have read the Bible quite diligently, and it is said that he accepted it not so much as the “Gospel” in the conventional sense, but rather as the “Law” of life. Consequently, he agonized over his own weakness and inadequacy in failing to live according to the Law, and such anguish frequently surfaces in his various works. These struggles are clearly evident in the novel ‘No Longer Human’ as well.
“Dad. They say that if you pray, God will grant you anything. Is that true?” I thought to myself that I, more than anyone, wanted to say that prayer. Ah… Grant me a cold, unyielding will. Let me understand the true nature of “humanity.” Let it not be a sin for one person to push another away. Grant me a mask of rage. “Sure~. If it’s Shige-chan’s prayer, God will grant anything. But He won’t grant Dad’s prayer.”
I was even afraid of God. I didn’t believe in God’s love; I believed only in God’s punishment. Faith felt like groaning as I made my way to the judgment seat to be flogged by God, and while I believed in hell, I simply couldn’t bring myself to believe in the existence of heaven.
Dazai knew of a “God” who condemned him, but he could not find a “God” who would forgive him. He often thought along the lines of “I = God, the world = evil,” which is the exact opposite of the traditional Christian worldview of “I = sin, God = love.” This shows that he lacked even a “basic sense of trust” in the world. In particular, the final part of the novel hints at his abandonment of the Christian concept of God.
“His father is the bad one.” This line, spoken matter-of-factly by Madame, originally read “His father is all bad” in the first draft. The term “angel” also appeared in the first draft instead of “God,” and “angel” is clearly a term premised on a Christian worldview. Ultimately, it appears that Dazai chose the word “God”—which carries less religious connotation—instead of “angel” to tone down the religious overtones. It is also possible that he omitted the word “all” to prevent the story from being reduced to a simple “tragedy of a son caused by his father.”
In an interview during his later years, Dazai remarked, “I am now closer to the existentialism that emerged in France,” and “What a writer should pursue is precisely adulthood.” This suggests that in his final years, he was seeking a religious worldview to replace traditional Christianity.
In 2009, the 100th anniversary of Dazai’s birth, films, animations, and TV dramas were produced, and a manga based on this work also gained immense popularity. There have also been musical adaptations.
